Who keeps coming here?

Having been away for a while (again), I dropped in today to check up on things. The last 6 months of stats seem . . . oddly high. As in, who exactly is finding this blog, and for what reason? Image searches? I would really hate it if it's just a bunch of AI robots. I suppose viewing my nearly 20 years of posts would be a good way to incorporate rants into media writing while increasing the frequency of run-on sentences and poor grammar, if these are the things they're trying to learn. I got Grammarly this year for my dissertation, and I was and am frankly horrified at how upsettingly unprofessional my writing is. It's correcting all my shit even now, IN REAL TIME, constantly marking up everything with red and blue. I've always written my posts here exactly how I think, which does not typically translate into writing one would consider "polished." This has always been more for fun, not for merit. Certainly not for money. No, I do not want to rephrase UPSETTINGLY UNPROFESSIONAL, thanks.

Search and click on the round shoe icon at the bottom to make the heels stomp across the screen

I got the A-List pass again for the summer, and I'm very giddy about all the films I want to see. I did not cry at all of the trailers this time, like last year, but I got very close at The Odyssey and Toy Story 5. Later, during the middle of the feature, I felt it again when Madonna's "Vogue" came on, so my emotion might just have been a reaction to film music all along, not just being upset and dysregulated all the time. To be fair, I AM often upset and dysregulated, but I think that is excusable in this second Trump presidency, 4 years into a doctoral program, and SOBER, for fuck's sake. I actually like that the movies still make me cry. 

The Devil Wears Prada 2, 2026, d. David Frankel, w. Aline Brosh McKenna

Very Short Review 

1. The story was fine, the characters were still engaging and interesting, and everyone looked amazing.

2. I loved seeing all the posh settings of New York City and Milan. Instrumental musical motifs from the first film came up in all the right moments, added with some revisited Madonna and new Lady Gaga. 

3. The theme here seemed to be Is Miranda Good or Bad This Time together with Tech Bros Always Kill Everything. Overall, it seemed more wholesome than the first film, which I kind of enjoyed. 

*The first film is always nostalgic for me in that I associate it with a teeny little Chinese spa (which may have been mafia-owned) in Chongqing, where we went for back and foot massages during our music therapy cohort's summer abroad trip in 2018. It was approximately 100 degrees in July, 11pm at night, and we were waiting around for everyone in the group to finish getting massaged. Someone turned on a TV, and this film was on. I will always think of this film on very hot summer nights or whenever I hear "Suddenly I See" or "City of Blinding Lights". 

**At one time, I had an irrational issue with the shrug/cape (shrape?) Andy wears on the last day in Paris in the first film. I don't remember why, but I complained very loudly about it while rewatching with a friend, her daughter, and my daughters. This resulted in the friend and her daughter making one like it out of felt and bringing it to the next gathering for whoever lost our recurring Speed card game to wear, labeled "Shrape of Shame." Luckily, I did not lose and did not have to wear it.